AP 0986: What Is a Good Members-Only WordPress Plugin?

By Pat Flynn on October 31, 2017

AskPat 986 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey. What’s up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and thank you so much for joining me today in today’s episode of AskPat. This is Episode 986, the final episode here in October, and happy Halloween for those of you who are listening on this particular date.

Today, we have a great question coming in from Paul, but, before we get to that, I just want to thank today’s sponsor, a sponsor that you all know, like, and love—and that is FreshBooks, one of my favorite companies because they help serve me and millions of other small business owners by helping us keep track of our business finances, from our income to our expenses and also invoicing. If you do any invoicing of any kind, any billing, you want to make it easy for people to pay you, right? FreshBooks can help you do that. You can get a professional invoice in a person’s hand in less than thirty seconds which is amazing. If you want to check it out for free for thirty days, you can get a thirty day free trial by going to Freshbooks.com/askpat and just make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Alright, now here’s today’s question from Paul.

Paul Churchill: Hey, Pat. This is Paul Churchill with the Recovery Elevator Podcast: it is a podcast geared towards helping those who would like to live a life without alcohol. I launched a private community about a year ago, actually read a book called Will It Fly? . . . I forget who wrote that book. I’m just kidding—Fly it has done.

Now, I’m trying to find ways to add value to the community. I got two questions here. Number one is, what is a good member’s-only plugin for WordPress, something where people get a username and log on when they sign up for the $12 a month monthly community? The next question is, what are some added value items that I can give to the community? I’ve previously tried to do an accountability partner program where I pair people with similar sobriety dates, but that did not fly. I’m looking for other things I can do to add value to my customers and add value to the community. I thought about doing a video series, things like that, but I just want to ask the guru. What do you think would fly? Okay. Thanks, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Paul. Thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and just thank you for mentioning Will It Fly?. I’m so happy to see that what you’ve built is not only something that is working but it’s working to help change people’s lives, obviously. There’s a person in one of my podcasting courses. His name is Michael Gallardo; he has a podcast called Sober Together. To see the lives that he has changed through his podcast has just made me feel so great and to now hear you and what you’re doing as a result of what you’ve learned in Will It Fly?—it’s just blowing my mind. This is why I do what I do. Thank you, Paul, for telling me that.

Now, it’s also really encouraging to see that you’re trying these new things and some of them aren’t working and you’re still trying even more new things and you’re asking questions. It’s exactly what you need to do to succeed so you’re doing all the right things, Paul. Even though some things might be failures like this accountability partnership thing you’ve tried to put together, it’s okay. You’re going to have to get through some of that stuff to get to the good stuff so keep on going is what I wanted to say.

Now, to answer your question, first of all, a good member’s-only plugin, there’s a couple that I can recommend to you. One of them is mainly built for courses, the other one is something you can do a little more with. The first one is Zippy Courses by Derek Halpern. He is a well-known person in the online business space and that is a good membership-only plugin that allows you to really create mostly just content-based things that are in your website. What may be more relevant to you is WP WishList—that’s a WordPress plugin that you can use to create just member’s-only access areas on your website and you can include many different things along with those pages that you include just for members only: blog posts, videos, course related things, communities, forums, et cetera, depending on what other tools you end up adding on top of that.

But, let’s brainstorm a little bit. What other added value items can you give to your community? I think the number one thing you should do before you ask me, Paul, although you’ve done that already, is to ask your audience—what do they really need help with? What are some of the ideas that your community is coming up with or what are they still struggling with? They’re getting a lot of value with being a part of your community, but I’m sure that now they’re opening up to you even more in terms of what they might enjoy or want to have access to or have more access to or get their hands on. I think it would be amazing for you to tap into your existing audience. I think it would show that you care about really what is meaningful to them, and likely you’re already doing that because you’ve read Will It Fly? and you know how that goes down and you’re just looking for maybe some outside perspective here which I’m definitely able to give you. I think videos are very powerful. Maybe certain video series related to certain situations that your audience may go through. For example, if there’s some night where they have some temptation or they still want to go out and don’t want to drink, for example, is there a video that perhaps they can watch beforehand just as a reminder to encourage them to stay strong in all those kinds of things? Like in certain situations, I can see situational videos being really popular and something that a lot of people could benefit from. I can also see calls or office hours. You can do Zoom coaching calls—one-to-many or one-to-one—as an additional offering or an up-sell. There’s a lot of things you can do there.

I would hesitate with just giving more of your time away with the current price point that people are paying. A newsletter could be something interesting. Maybe adding like, a wins of the week for everybody—everybody shares their big wins that you’ve been compiling to a newsletter that everybody gets. I think that could help encourage other people, too. Maybe even it’s a member’s-only podcast that they listen to where they hear deeper stories from the members and just really feel more connected as a community. Perhaps it’s in person events or other things like that. Perhaps it’s even physical products like a pen or a button or something like that. I’m just brainstorming here. You could really take it any which way you want, Paul, and I think that’s a cool thing here. Again, remember, you’re here to serve your community and I think you know this. This is a life-changing thing that you’re creating so keep going. Thank you, Paul, for doing what you’re doing and who you are and for just taking the time to reach out to me and letting me know that I had even a little bit to do with this. But, this is all you. RecoveryElevator.com is the website and I just want to thank you again, Paul. I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show, too. We’ll hook you up with that very soon. In the meantime, just thank you again. And, for anybody else out there who has a question that you want potentially answered here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thanks so much.

Here’s a quote to finish off the day by Albert Einstein. “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

All right. Thanks so much. Take care and I’ll see you on the next episode of AskPat. One more time, happy Halloween. Mwahahahahahaha . . . Sorry.

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Show Notes

Today’s question comes from Paul, who asks if I know any good members-only WordPress plugins. Also, what are some added-value items he can give to his community? Paul’s website is RecoveryElevator.com.

In this episode I mention my book, Will It Fly?, which is all about idea validation and testing your next business idea.